Beef and Broccoli

I've been super busy with work lately, and haven't really had time to cook elaborate fancy-pants meals. But lucky for you, that means this recipe will be really simple. Yay. I've been making a lot of beef and broccoli because it is seriously the easiest thing in the world to make. The only think that might be hard is getting the Oyster sauce if you don't have access to an Asian grocer.

Kale Chips

Kale chips have been the buzz on the food blogosphere for quite sometimes, but it seems rather odd to me, so I didn't make any effort to try it. One day, I was at the Ferry Building downtown San Francisco when this all natural food company was giving away free kale chip samples. Curiosity told me to just take the little paper cup. As I nibbled gingerly at the crunchy leaves with a slight hint of salty cheese, I thought to myself "LeTran, I think you made a mistake ignoring this kale chip trend." So, here I am, making kale chips, following the trend.

Spicy Italian Sausage & Lentil Soup

I was talking to the Chopping Block about lentil soup earlier and how we find it rather bland. So I decided to try to liven this soup up with some spice and lots and lots of meat. Okay, so maybe this is more like a hearty sausage soup with a dash of lentils, but whatever, it's all good. I made this soup twice, once with some Italian sausages from the butcher and once with some pre-cooked sausages from the deli aisle. I recommend the butcher stuff. The photo above was with the pre-cooked stuff.

Beef Chuck Pot Roast

(Image courtesy of The Chopping Block)

The Chopping Block has been really nice to me (strange, right), so in return I invited her over for dinner along with our friend Brendan and my neighbor Chris. My sister and I went grocery shopping, and we got this four pound beef chuck, which is perfect for a beautiful pot roast!

Potato-less New England Clam Chowder

You know what I hate? Potatoes in my clam chowder. Seriously! I always feel like I'm getting ripped off when I get a bowl full of potatoes with one or two clams, and because of that, I started to hate potatoes in my chowder. That delicious starchy vegetable has become a bane in my side, so I decided to get rid of it completely. You heard me right. Blasphemy.

"Grilled" Romantic Heart

The below conversation happened in Vietnamese:

My mom: Do you want some lettuce?
Me: What kind of lettuce?
My mom: Your favorite lettuce, remember? [in English] heart romantic!

That was how my mom referred to hearts of Romaine. It's incredibly cute. From now on, I'm going to call Romaine lettuce heart romantic lettuce instead.

Let me tell you about a silly little love affair between the beautiful and delicate Heart Romantic Lettuce and the bad bad Delicious Bacon boy who stopped the sweet lettuce in her track via a heart attack.

Pork Lettuce Wraps

Pork. Pork pork pork pork. I don't think I eat much pork. Oh wait, yes I do. I eat a lot of the Chopping Block's Lemongrass Pork Chops, bacon, some barbecue pork, some roast pork and .... more bacon. But you see, there's not a whole lot of ground pork in the mix. To be honest, I bought the ground pork to make some fish paste & pork patties. Sounds gross? Eh. I can't tell you because I decided to make this dish instead.

Beef Stir-Fry with Green Beans

So I had a lot of vegetables left over from some previous meals that I had to get rid of. The perfect way to get rid of vegetables is stir-fry; I'm sure Drea would agree. So this is just one of those random-let's-throw-everything-in kind of meal post.

Leafy Pizza

There've been so many meaty dishes on this site, I wanted to contribute a veggilicious one :P Pizza is one of my, "I'm so tired," dishes. Y'know, one of the meals you could fix with your eyes closed? So I almost never play with the recipe. Tonight, because my exhaustion struck on Friday, I found a mostly covered 2nd crust in my fridge and new "Oh, I need to do pizza again before the crust goes stale."

Tomato Egg Cups

Nur sent me this recipe from La Casita Inspirada out of the blue. It's super easy and pretty so I made it.


Two beautiful and ripe tomatoes? Check.


Hollow out tomatoes' innards? Check.


Fill each tomato with an egg, some ground pepper, and salt? Check, check, and check!



Pop in preheated 425 degrees F oven for 20 minutes, then top with crispy bacon bits? Check! The recipe actually says to top it off with cheese but I think bacon is greater than cheese, so I went with bacon.

That's it. I actually switched to the broiler option for an additional 5 minutes because I do not like my eggs so runny. So easy and pretty even a LeTran can do it!

Oxtail Stew

"Have you ever had oxtails? Most people I know haven't even heard of them, which is really quite a shame. Think braised beef short ribs, but with even more flavor, and you'll get a sense of why those of us who eat oxtail get dreamy eyed when we think about them. Yes oxtails come from a steer's tail, a well exercised muscle, marbled with fat. The segments are vertebrae so they have lots of iron-rich marrow as well. My father, who grew up during the Depression, remembers oxtails as being food for people with little money, because they could be had so cheap. You could get them for pennies a pound. These days, they're somewhat hard to come by and no longer cheap (though you can sometimes get a good deal on them at Costco and Asian markets). As with most tough cuts, oxtail are best slow cooked for several hours. They tend to be fatty, so we like to cook them a day ahead, so we can chill them overnight and scrape off the fat from the top the next day." - Simply Recipes

The above is an excerpt from Simply Recipes' Oxtail Stew recipe. It's a little similar to the one in this recipe, and I thought it was a good introduction to oxtails if you've never heard of them. I decided that I wanted to have some of my mom's cooking, so I called her up for her oxtail stew, which is one of her staple recipes. While I was on the phone with her she told me how Gandalf likes to sleep with her, aw! And Gandalf stole my mom's fish while she was cooking, and my mom had to chase her around the house to get it back. My sister says Gandalf also stole her chicken. In case you forgot who Gandalf is, she's this little kitty cat. Anyways, less cats more food!

Caprese Salad

I used to think that caprese salad is the dumbest thing in the world. Why? I'll tell you why. I was watching an episode of Sex and the City and Charlotte was ordering a caprese salad. When her salad came out, it was one single slice of tomato, one slice of mozzarella, and one basil leaf! I was so perplexed. Why the hell would anyone want to eat that? It's so uninteresting! If I want to eat one slice of tomato, one slice of cheese, and one LEAF I wouldn't pay $5 for it!

Since I'm a grown up now, I decide to go back to all of the food I despised/thought was stupid as a child and try it again. Or else, I'd just be stuck in the child phase forever! Not that it's bad to be a child at heart, but it's pretty stupid to stay ignorant.

Let me tell you, I am a changed woman! ...as far as caprese salad is concerned, that is.

Mustard Green and Tofu Soup

This is my favorite side soup dish of all time! OF ALL TIME! I seem to have a lot of favorite dishes of all time, but that just means there are a lot of things that I enjoy. Not only is this soup fabulous, it's also very simple to make. Let's start, shall we?